Bright morning, dark day

09.11.01

One by one, the floors of the World Trade Center's north tower are collapsing.

It's nearly 10:29 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Butler, a New York City firefighter, is in a stairwell in the tower, just four floors from the lobby, holding up an exhausted 59-year-old woman too weak to descend on her own.

The lights go out. The building shakes, and Butler, who studied firefighting at Northampton Community College, is thrown forward.

As he hurtles through the darkness, Butler squeezes his eyes shut. Then he braces his 270-pound weight lifter's frame and waits for the concrete to crush him.

The building's collapse sends smoke billowing through lower Manhattan as people stampede through the streets. Emotional tremors quake the city and the nation.

It's a day that will take on epic proportions, dawned on a lovely late summer morning. The alarm on Greg Trevor's watch beeps. The former Allentown resident slips out of bed, careful not to wake his wife, Allison Salerno.

As a public relations representative for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Trevor usually works from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. at his office in the Trade Center's north tower.

But his wife, a former Morning Call reporter, is starting a new job as an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University. So Trevor, 38, has arranged to go to work early so he can be home by late afternoon to take care of their sons, Gabriel, 4, and Lucas, 1.

Trevor dons a suit, knit tie and dress shoes. He sneaks into the boys' room, where Gabriel and Lucas are curled up together in Gabriel's bed. Trevor stares fondly at them, kissing each on the cheek before rushing out the door of his Highland Park, N.J., home, eager to beat the traffic into the city.

As Trevor drives along the New Jersey Turnpike, Wayne Russo hustles out the door of the two-story colonial he shares with his parents, Arthur and Arlene Russo, in Union, N.J. He needs to catch the 6:34 a.m. New Jersey Transit bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York.

"Talk to you later, Mom," Wayne calls as he slips a headset over his curly brown hair so he can listen to Howard Stern during his commute. From the Port Authority, he'll catch a subway to the bowels of the Trade Center, then take two elevators to his office on the 98th floor of the north tower, where he works as an accountant for Marsh & McClellan, an insurance firm.

Arthur and Arlene Russo also are rushing. They have an early flight to Des Moines, Iowa, where they will attend an Air Force veterans' convention. Arthur, who spent part of his childhood in Phillipsburg, earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism during World War II.

The Russos had considered asking their son to drive them to Newark Liberty International Airport, just seven miles away. But they know their son hates to be late to work. Instead, Arthur's brother chauffeurs them.

Hundreds of miles away, as the Russos head to the airport, Pennsylvania-born Navy Cmdr. Robert Allan Schlegel arrives at his temporary office on the periphery of the Pentagon. His regular office in the center of the Pentagon is being renovated.

Schlegel is on the fast track to becoming commander of his own ship. Thirty-eight years old and married, the ever-smiling Schlegel is known for his leadership skills and wry sense of humor, such as when he holds up his young nephew, Kenny, by the ankles and declares "Coin check!" as he awaits falling change.

As Schlegel settles in at his desk, Leslie Whittington, her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two daughters wait to catch American Airlines Flight 77, scheduled to leave at 8:10 a.m from Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.

It will be the first leg of a journey to Australia, where Whittington, a 45-year-old Georgetown University economics professor, will be a visiting fellow at Australian National University in Canberra for two months.

The family is thrilled about their trip. Falkenberg, a software engineer and avid environmentalist, is eager to see koalas and kangaroos.

The family spent the previous night in a hotel near the airport. To tire the girls out so they might sleep during the long airplane rides, they spent a lot of time splashing in the hotel pool. Both Zoe, a precocious 8-year-old who dreams of dancing in the Washington Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker," and Dana, an energetic 3-year-old who shares her dad's curly brown hair, love to swim.

The family has friends and relatives around the country, so at the airport, Whittington drops a handful of postcards into a mailbox to let people like her younger brother Kirk know how to reach them.

Before boarding, Whittington calls her mother, Ruth Koch, in Athens, Ga. The two women are close. Koch and her husband, George, are planning to move to Maryland soon to help out with the grandchildren.

Whittington says goodbye and passes the phone first to Zoe and then to Dana.